Momentum wars

In the past 10 days, Mitt Romney’s campaign has gone from Big Mo to Slow Mo.

Like a shark that must swim forward and fast, the Romney campaign needs to maintain its forward momentum — and its heady narrative of an irresistible finish-line surge — despite an increasing pile of polling data pointing to a race that has stabilized since Barack Obama’s disastrous performance at the Oct. 3rd debate in Denver.

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“Narrative” is an overrated and perishable commodity in politics. But maintaining the perception of momentum has become critical to a challenger banking on a wave of last-minute enthusiasm to defeat an incumbent with a distinct electoral map advantage and small leads in Ohio, Iowa, Nevada and Wisconsin.

The problem: despite a dramatically improved Romney position following the third and final presidential debate on Monday, his momentum in recent polls has slowed discernibly, owing, in part, to Obama’s stronger performances in the face-offs on Long Island and in Boca Raton.

“The president seems to be a little bit stronger in some of the key states, specifically Ohio, than he was,” said Quinnipiac University pollster Peter Brown, who specializes in battleground surveys. “But it’s very hard to know what the momentum situation looks like in three, four, five days.”

Veteran GOP pollster David Winston thinks Romney may benefit from the advantage most challengers have among independents at the end of most presidential races, but adds: “What’s the level of momentum at this point? I think that’s unclear.”

That’s not Team Romney’s public line. They claim the party started in Denver three weeks ago and has been roaring ever since.

“We have seen growing momentum and enthusiasm surging towards Gov. Romney since the first debate and all the way through to today,” Romney adviser Kevin Madden told POLITICO Thursday.

Starting Wednesday, Romney campaign aides and cable surrogates fanned out to fight the latest battle in the momentum war, as Democrats spun one of their own — a Romney stall.

“Both of our campaigns are telling you where we think the race is, and in 13 days one of us will be right and one of us will be wrong,” Obama adviser David Plouffe told reporters traveling with Obama during a marathon multi-state campaign swing. “My sense is you’re going to find that what was emanating out of Boston was more bluff than reality.”

Early Thursday, hours after a national Gallup tracking poll of likely voters showed Romney’s seven-point lead shrinking by three over the past week, the former Massachusetts governor sent supporters a cheerful email assuring them that the wind, in fact, was still at his back.

“With less than two weeks to go, we’re feeling the momentum,” said Romney, who previewed the argument at an appearance in Reno a day earlier. “The debates have supercharged our campaign. We’re seeing more and more enthusiasm — and more and more support. This has become more than just a campaign. It’s become a national movement.”

To keep the ball rolling, the Romney campaign released a three-minute Web ad entitled, appropriately enough, “Momentum,” and revealed impressive fundraising totals for the first half of October — $111.8 million — which the conservative Washington Times cited “some good signs that Mr. Romney’s momentum is not slowing.”

The money is one item on the Romney momentum side of the ledger: the Obama campaign announced it had raised $20 million less in the same period.

The Romney campaign waited about two minutes to mass-blast the latest Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, which showed the GOP nominee with a 50 percent to 47 percent edge — even though the story that accompanied the email reminded readers the result “is not one that is statistically significant” because of the poll’s five-point margin of error.

Nate Silver of The New York Times’ Five Thirty Eight Blog — whose prediction of an Obama electoral college win has been beacon to despondent Democrats — pointed out that only one of eight national polls released in the last week points to a Romney gain, and that’s the online Ispos/Reuters survey. Two show no change, and five of them point to a net Obama gain of between 1 percent and 3 percent.